Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Jitin Prasada, on Wednesday said that the government's IndiaAI Mission has onboarded over 38,000 GPUs and approved 190 projects to strengthen the country’s artificial intelligence ecosystem, while the Semicon India Programme has cleared 10 semiconductor units to boost domestic chip manufacturing.
Prasada in Lok Sabha stated that as part of the initiative, 38,231 GPUs have been onboarded through a common compute facility and are being provided to startups and academia at subsidised rates of around Rs 65 per GPU per hour.
According to him, of the 190 projects approved under the mission, 78 are with government entities, 46 with startups and MSMEs, 30 with early-stage startups, 27 with academia and researchers, five with students, and four with early-stage researchers, reflecting broad-based participation.
The government is also supporting the development of indigenous AI capabilities, including processors and accelerators, under the National Supercomputing Mission using the open-source RISC-V architecture. In parallel, the Semicon India Programme has approved 10 semiconductor manufacturing units, with one unit already in commercial production and three in pilot stage.
Tata Electronics is setting up a semiconductor fabrication unit in Gujarat with an investment of Rs 91,526 crore, with a planned capacity of 50,000 wafer starts per month across technology nodes ranging from 110 nm to 28 nm, the minister said.
To boost chip design, the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme has approved 24 semiconductor design projects, with 14 companies securing venture capital funding. Moreover, the minister also said that 103 fabless chip design firms have been supported with access to design infrastructure, while 7 chips have been fabricated out of 16 designs taped out, including at advanced nodes such as 12 nm.
The government said over 140 reusable semiconductor IP cores have been developed and 10 patents filed, strengthening India’s design ecosystem. On the AI front, the mission is supporting 12 organisations and consortia to develop indigenous foundational models, with select models already launched and made available on public platforms for wider use.
The initiative is also promoting global expansion of Indian startups, with 10 AI startups selected under an international programme in collaboration with partners in France. Further, 30 AI applications focused on sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, climate change and disaster management have been identified, while 13 projects on responsible AI are currently underway.
According to the minister, the Indian government is supporting 500 PhD scholars, 5,000 postgraduates and 8,000 undergraduates, and has established 27 AI labs in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, with 543 ITIs and polytechnics approved for similar facilities. The IndiaAI Mission was launched with an outlay of Rs 10,372 crore, aimed at democratising access to high-performance computing and supporting startups, academia and research institutions.